


grey and gold

by ceraunos



Series: black sails prompt fills [1]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Aging, Body Positivity, Canon Compliant, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 04, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-04 02:52:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16338431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceraunos/pseuds/ceraunos
Summary: In the dying evening light Thomas stands at the window and glows. The flecks of grey in his hair like threads of silver woven into gold.~Prompt fill for 'I wish you could see yourself as I do' and 'There was never a choice'. Chapter 1 is set in canon and is a little angsty. Chapter 2 is an alternative ending to the same introduction set several years post canon and is super gentle and non angsty. Also features body positivity guru Thomas.





	1. Chapter 1

In the dying evening light Thomas stands at the window and glows. The flecks of grey in his hair like threads of silver woven into gold and when he arches, stretching to pull his shirt over his head, the muscles in his back glide like pebbles on a riverbank, rippling gently below the surface.

Thomas leans against the window frame, watching the orange burn of the sun and time stops, suspended as if even the dust motes are waiting patiently for James’ mind to swim a little longer in the image. The floor beneath his feet is as solid as air. He itches for a paintbrush despite never having touched one before, thinks this image probably exists already in a gallery somewhere and that he has been brushed accidently into it, an intruder in an immaculate tableau. James fastens the loose buttons on his own shirt without conscious thought.

“James?” Thomas turns and smiles so softly James’ chest burns. James wants to kiss the deep crease in the corner of Thomas’ eye except to touch would be to shatter the perfect illusion.

James’ mouth forms the shape of “You’re beautiful” and Thomas blushes high and deep and somehow still delicately. “I love you.” James says, because he never said it enough before.

Behind him the sun sets further and turns Thomas’ skin to white marble. There’s a ringing beginning in James’ ears like the after effect of a cannon shot at close range. Thomas blinks slowly, taking a step towards James, his palm outstretched and open.

James can’t stand it any longer. He closes the gap between them, closes his eyes and presses his lips to Thomas’ and it feels like touching glass.

James opens his eyes and finds them wet. The sun is long set, there is blood in his hair and someone else’s caked deep in his skin. The heady mix of residue fear and adrenaline crackles like the beginning of a storm around the ship.

He takes a deep, long breath. Flint rises.

Then Thomas is in front of him again but this time he’s standing in the musty darkness of his cabin and it is so unexpected that Flint freezes, his whole being halted. This hasn’t happened before, doesn’t happen. It isn’t  _ allowed _ to happen like this.

Thomas opens his mouth but Flint can’t hear what he’s trying to say. He’s aware there’s a gasping feeling coming from somewhere deep inside him and he wills it hopelessly to cease.

“James!” Thomas screams and it sounds like a whisper, barely breaking the fog of Flint’s mind. It’s enough though, he hears.

“James.” Thomas says again. “James, please.”

‘Stop, stop, stop.’ James’ mind pleads over again. ‘Please not here, not like this. Not when I’m like this.’

“Like what?” Thomas asks, confused.

‘No, no, no.’ James sobs.

“James? I don’t understand. Like what?”

“You know what. Like this.” A distant part of James’ mind takes stock of the fact that he’s talking to a spectre and think he should feel faintly ridiculous about it. Except, that it all seems so very horrifyingly real, more so even than when James was controlling the vision before. “Flint wasn’t… you were never meant to be a part of him.”

“I already am.” Thomas says with such tender sympathy that James can’t bear it. He shakes his head frantically. It’s not true, Thomas has nothing to do with Flint, James was careful of that.

“He’s part of you which means I’m a part of him. He was created for me, was he not?” Thomas says, pressing on with a painful kindness. James screams silently and wordlessly and still Thomas stands calmly, palm outstretched in the mirror of a much kinder scene.

“I wish you could see yourself like I do. It’s still all you, Flint isn’t anything more than a name. You can stop this, stop him, if you like. You have a choice still.”

“There was never a choice.”

“There is always a choice. You could walk away.”

“No.” Flint says, hard. “It isn’t finished yet.”

He only hesitates for a moment at the door and when he looks back Thomas is still waiting, except the sides of his features seem fuzzy. Flint resists the urge to press his fingers to his temples and bring him back to focus; it is a dangerous game to talk to ghosts and it’s time he stopped imagining impossible futures, anyway

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was meant to be a very happy post canon quick piece of fluff and then I started listening to sufjan stevens and sad vibes took over instead. The next chapter is the story I was actually planning to write...


	2. Chapter 2

In the warm evening light Thomas stands at the window and glows. The flecks of grey in his hair like threads of silver woven into gold and when he arches, stretching to pull his shirt over his head, the muscles in his back glide like pebbles on a riverbank, rippling gently below the surface with an unspoken power James still finds himself marvelling at, unaccustomed to even after all these years.

Thomas leans against the window frame, watching the orange burn of the sun and time stops, suspended as if even the dust motes are waiting patiently for James’ mind to swim a little longer in the image. He curls his toes into the wood floor beneath him and itches for a paintbrush, despite never having touched one before. He feels like an intruder in a perfect tableau, a fleck of paint accidentally splashed onto a finished canvas. He fastens the loose buttons of his own shirt without conscious thought, covering an expanse of age-worn freckles and white, wiry hairs.

“James?” Thomas turns and smiles so softly James’ chest burns. James wants to kiss the deep crease in the corner of Thomas’ eye except to touch might start time in motion again and shatter this moment. Thomas makes the decision for him, walking forward and placing his palm against James’ chest. It moment doesn’t leave; it only grows to accommodate James as well.

“You’re beautiful” James says and it almost catches in his throat. Thomas blushes high and deep and somehow still delicately and James’ mind unravels seamlessly back decades to the first time he saw that flush. “I love you” he says, because he never said it enough before.

Thomas smiles beatifically and runs a knuckle along James’ jaw, rubbing at the whiskers he finds there. “Mm. I love you too.” He says it so honestly and yet so casually that James can hardly believe there was a time it wasn’t an everyday utterance. “My old man.” Thomas adds, and suddenly James has to steady himself against a flinch that rises from some deep routed part of him. His skin crawls as if he were covered in lice and he wishes he could step out of it somehow.

Thomas hasn’t noticed, he’s kissing James softly, lingering against his lips. There’s mud from the garden caked in the back of James’ hair and Thomas pulls away with a tut to brush it out. James wants to laugh fondly but his mind is a haze of half formed thoughts and distant fears.

Behind him the sun sets further and turns Thomas’ skin to a rose bronze, casting him in the impression of some godlike figure, lithe and Riace like. There’s a ringing beginning in James’ ears, a growing buzz like lazy mosquitos on a hot night.

Bizarrely, years of farming, hard labour and tough conditions have aged Thomas well. Once, as a young man, Thomas had admitted to James that he worried he would begin to look like his father one day. James loathes the circumstances that caused it but concedes that by imprisoning Thomas, Alfred Hamilton did at least ensure his image would never live on in Thomas. Not that James truly believes someone as good as Thomas could bare any resemblance to something as grossly ugly as Alfred was anyway.

“James?” Thomas says, and James is vaguely aware that he is still standing, staring vacantly at Thomas in some frozen deadlock with his own mind. Thomas runs his hand over James’ hip questioningly and James immediately wants it gone. He steps back until he is safely out of Thomas’ reach. He wishes he had a coat at hand to pull on.

There’s always been an inch of vanity to James, caused by a knowledge that looking the part is half the battle in managing the way the world perceives you. It’s silly, then, that he cares about how Thomas, the one person that isn’t part of the outside world, perceives him. He cares, unexpectedly, about the creases in his forehead and the soft rolls in his stomach, the loose skin and bony knuckles. There’s more white than auburn in his hair now, although that’s existed since it first started growing back on the plantation. His knees click when he sits and some days his back buckles so painfully he can barely stand. There’s old scars which have never faded and new marks caused entirely by finally letting his body rest for the first time in his life. His body changed while he was Flint and has never, really healed.  

“James?” Thomas says again, worry coating his voice. His fingers are fluttering by his sides, tapping out against each other in a nervous gesture James wishes he weren’t so familiar with.

“Sorry. It’s nothing.” James shakes his head, tries to dislodge the pattern of thoughts. “I’m being ridiculous.”

Thomas steps forward and cups James’ head in both hands. James attempts to turn away and Thomas only holds on harder, fingers firm against the base of James’ skull. Years ago, during the first months at the plantation, they had devised a code word of sorts;  _ Prometheus  _ meant ‘you’re pushing too hard, I don’t want this’. It was a way end the tentative sidestepping of so much trauma and grief which had ruled them and allowed real, actual conversations to begin. James knows that if he said it now he would be lying.

“Tell me.” Thomas says, eyes searching his.

After a moment, James takes one of Thomas’ hands and guides it to each separate point of body that holds hidden shame for him. He shakes with the need to remove himself from Thomas’ touch. It doesn’t take long, though, before Thomas catches his meaning.

“Oh.” He breaths. “What’s brought this on?” His fingers keep touching, tracing every inch of James’ body with light caresses.

James shrugs and feels with relief the fight to resist Thomas’ body subside a little. “I don’t know. I think it’s always been there a little, maybe.”

“This isn’t what I meant by it. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“You didn’t.” James says, because it’s true. “Except that you’re so handsome still and I’m…” James trails off, gesturing at himself.

“Devastating.” Thomas says, and James laughs self-deprecatingly. “No, it’s true. I wish you could see yourself as I do.”

“Why?” James whispers before he’s even thought about it.

“All of you, all of this” Thomas says, with a kiss to James’ hand “I love firstly because it is beautiful in its own right.”

James knows the expression on his face is one of disbelief.  

“And secondly,” Thomas continues “because I never thought I would get to see it. Those years apart, you were immortally young to me. I mourned the idea of seeing you grow old, knowing that we would never do it together was painful beyond measure. So to see this, now, it means we’ve won. Somehow, against all the odds, we survived.”

James realises he recalls a similar conversation had several years ago when Thomas had asked how James could stand to touch his scars left over from Bethlem. James had explained by being able to touch them he knew the cause of them was over. At Thomas’ declaration a steady wave of understanding washes over him and the knot in his chest loosens just a little more.

“We’re hardly doing it together, though.” He says, raising his eyebrows at Thomas. Thomas smiles warmly, taking both of James’ hands in his own.

“I think you’re giving me a little more credit for being youthful than I deserve.” He says and as he moves closer to James his hip pops loudly, as if on on cue. Thomas laughs and James’ smile feels easier than he had expected it to.

Thomas pulls James into a kiss and James goes willingly, letting Thomas’ fingers fiddle the buttons of his shirt undone without protestation. Outside a bird cries at the moon and for a moment it sounds so much like a seabird that a wash of yearning nostalgia hits James with the force of a thousand knots of wind against sail.

Thomas must notice the way his body naturally turns toward the sound because he lets go of James a little and asks “did you ever consider not leaving?” He knows the answer, has asked the question time and time before. It is reassuring, though, to say it again.

“There was never a choice between the sea and you, my love.” James says, pulling Thomas back into the kiss. Perhaps once the answer wasn’t as certain as James wishes it had been but it very much feels like the truth now.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I invented a phrase for this chapter. ‘Riace like’ is in reference to the Riace warrior bronzes from the early Classical Greek period. I like the idea that they look so beautiful and perfect but they’re so idealised they’re actually physically impossible - a little like how James sees Thomas. (It’s a little bit of an anachronism because they weren’t found until the 1970s so James wouldn’t have know about them but still.)
> 
> I am always super eager to write for any prompts sent my way over on [ tumblr](http://ceraunos.tumblr.com) btw!!


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